Daily Hindu Editorials

Governments must ensure local-level interventions to deal with heat stress The India Meteorological Department’s forecast of above-normal maximum and minimum temperatures across the country during the pre-monsoon March-May period is a timely alert for State authorities to review their preparedness. Even a marginal rise above the normal will lead to enormous heat stress for millions of Indians, given the deprived conditions in which they live. Moreover, there are distinct groups at particular risk for health-related problems during a heat wave, such as senior citizens and people with pre-existing disease, mental illness or disability, which prevents them from being able to care for themselves. It is the responsibility of governments to ensure that community-level interventions are taken up to help vulnerable groups. The advent of hot weather this year is marked by temperatures rising between 1.6° Celsius and 5° C above normal in States such as Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand...

Mayawati is testing BSP’s alliance options by supporting the SP in UP by-elections If politics is the art of the next best, then Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati is slowly becoming adept at it. She has been averse to pre-poll alliances, opting instead for post-poll tie-ups with either the Bharatiya Janata Party or the Samajwadi Party, depending on the nature of the electoral outcome. For her to now extend support to the SP in the by-elections to the Phulpur and Gorakhpur Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh is therefore a serious departure from practice. True, the support comes with riders. She made it clear this does not amount to a formal alliance and is no pointer to a tie-up for the 2019 Lok Sabha election. But implicit in her declaration of support is a recognition that the BJP is the party to beat, and that the BSP needs to back the strongest opposition party in elections where it is not a contender. If the Lok Sabha election in 2014 and the Assembly election in 2017 are...

India-China-Pakistan cooperation can transform the subcontinent — joining a renamed CPEC would be a good start A few months ago, Anjum Altaf, former dean of the prestigious Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), wrote an article in the Dawn newspaper, making a strong case for mutually beneficial economic cooperation between Pakistan and India. He also gave a revealing example of how this has become impossible because of “blind nationalism” in Pakistan. “At the time,” he wrote, “when tomatoes were selling for Rs300 a kilo in Lahore, they were available at Indian Rs40 a kilo in Amritsar a mere 30 miles away. But a visceral Indo-phobia, shared by many of our influentials, stood in the way of consumers benefiting from the lower priced supply.” Many Pakistani politicians want nothing to be imported from India, the enemy nation. This kind of blind nationalism is by no means Pakistan’s monopoly. Those who watch Indian TV channels debating India-Pakistan relations routinely hea...

A well-informed public can serve as a watchdog more effectively than existing banking regulatory bodies The Nirav Modi case, of bank fraud, has once again brought into focus the deficiencies in procedures and supervisory and regulatory controls in the banking sector. However, an equally important aspect that warrants a closer look is the opacity around the functioning of our banks that keeps the public in the dark about the extent and details of wrongdoing. Under the RTI In 2011-12, the Central Information Commission (CIC) considered appeals from applicants concerning bank regulatory functions after they had been denied information, under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) about these functions. The information sought comprised copies of their inspection reports on banks, details of action taken against banks in breach of the relevant laws and regulations, and advisory note...

Prime Minister Theresa May is finally focussing on Brexit details, but the path ahead remains thorny The past week has arguably been one of the most challenging for the British government since the 2016 referendum. It began with the momentous call by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to push for a customs union with the European Union, which firmly clarified the party’s standing as a supporter of a “soft Brexit” and one that has a pragmatic answer to avoiding a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. A week full of developments It was telling that the proposal from a party led by an avowed socialist, committed to returning large sectors of services to state ownership, was welcomed by the Confederation of British Industry as offering a “real world” solution, while Martin Donnelly, who was permanent secretary at the Department of International Trade until last year, compared Brexit to “giving up a three course meal... for the promise of a packet of cris...

With the assault on freedoms intensifying, it is crucial to engage more with international human rights law A few weeks ago, the World Justice Project released its Rule of Law Index 2017-18 report, which measures the extent to which 113 countries have adhered to the rule of law in that period. (India’s rank was 62, better than China, Pakistan, Myanmar and Bangladesh; Denmark occupied the top spot.) Every country’s performance was assessed in eight areas, including fundamental rights, which is measured by “absence of discrimination, right to life and security, due process, freedom of expression and religion, right to privacy, freedom of association, and labour rights.” The survey found that 71 out of the 113 countries have dropped in score. This report, along with others such as the Amnesty International Annual Report 2017-18, indicates the serious erosion of international human rights law in recent times. Story across the world Even a cursory glance at the world is worrying. I...